How big is your Inbox?

[Tron_fdc]

So I had a look, and I currently have 4,759 emails in my inbox. I'm an email packrat, and I'm afraid to delete any of them in case I need some kind of information from one of our employees, suppliers or customers. I delete all the junk as soon as it comes in, but I still accumulate a gigantic amount of messages.

Does anyone have an advice for this? How do you back up email? I tried to once, and I ended up losing all my attachments. This poses a problem for all the documents (porn) and drawings (porn) that I get on a daily (porn) basis.

I really need to get rid of this crap. Can I zip it or something?

[TurnedTheCorner]

I back up all my work email into a minimum of two personal folders per year, sorted by date. So PF1 is for Jan-Jun in a given year, PF2 is for Jul-Dec in any given year. Every other subfolder is similarly organized by date.

I delete nothing. Sure, I don't need to know today when a scheduled IT outage was planned in March of 2005. But who knows if I'll need to know that tomorrow?

I file things from my main Inbox into my PFs once I've read them and/or have completed the task associated with them. So as of now I only have 16 items in my main Inbox, and another 17 in various Inbox subfolders. For the sake of comparison, I have 2,604 items in my Jul-Dec '08 Personal Folder.

[Gozer]

*snicker*

[GreenTeaFrapp]

I've got 5765 unread emails in my Gmail account right now. No clue on how many read ones I have.

[Russic]

6778 messages in my gmail dating back to november of 04 (4.5 emails per day for more than 4 years straight). i don't sort them at all ... I only use the search function.

[KTrain]

Create folders and then create rules to sort incoming messages. It makes going through hundreds (or thousands) of emails much easier.

[Ford Prefect]

31,582 messages covering Jan. 2004 to Oct. 2008. That includes inbox and sent mail, and both the inbox and sent messages are archived by month. My inbox currently contains 786 message from Nov. 1 to date, and by sent box is contains 701 messages for a similar period. That does not include spam, which I delete as i receive it ... I generally get 250 to 300 pieces of spam per day.

I back it all up using Time Machine (I'm on a Mac).

[REDVAN]

I use the delete function. So I only have about 1000.

[Rerun]

I don't have an inbox... but I hear Whoopie Goldberg's is pretty big.

I remember Ted Danson (Whoopie's ex) saying that her's was so big it was like thowin a weiner down a hallway.

[TSXCman]

1901 unread in hotmail, i musta cleaned recently

[Flames89]

Unread Msgs:

Inbox - 689
Various subfolders where email gets routed automatically: around 22,500
Junk empties itself.

[dobbles]

i currently only have 515 things in my inbox. i delete things i know i wont need later, and use subfolders for most email leaving only general things in the inbox. i often times back up the actual data file so that i can import it onto another computer if need be.

i have only been at my new job for 14 months, so its not terribly big.

for home, i use the same system of subfolders. not sure how many i have there, but not really a lot. i have always been a big IM'er and texter, so not as many personal emails. also i despise forwards and don't allow people to send them to me. i hate them so much i will actually block friends that send me that crap!

[Tron_fdc]

Yeah, but how do you back it up? Can't I just magically hit "select all" and burn it to a CD or something?

[flip]

I only have about 300.

[GreenTeaFrapp]

Originally Posted by Tron_fdc

Yeah, but how do you back it up? Can't I just magically hit "select all" and burn it to a CD or something?

Depends on how you access your email.

[TurnedTheCorner]

Originally Posted by GreenTeaFrapp

Depends on how you access your email.

Exactly. I assume you're using Outlook or something if this is your office email?

[Tyler]

[dobbles]

Originally Posted by Tron_fdc

Yeah, but how do you back it up? Can't I just magically hit "select all" and burn it to a CD or something?

i generally back up the file that holds the email. for outlook its outlook.ost or something. its located in C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

[Tron_fdc]

Yeah, I'm using Outlook.

I have this sneaking suspicion that it's my email that is slowing down my computer. Hence the need to back up my files.

[Tron_fdc]

Originally Posted by dobbles

i generally back up the file that holds the email. for outlook its outlook.ost or something. its located in C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

I don't have that file...is that because I'm using XP?